~ Dedicated to bringing exposure to self-published authors, and exploring the best of contemporary writing

Monthly Archives: January 2014

Recently, Pubbed had the opportunity to work with Anna Fox, who runs a wonderful blog on increasing productivity (let’s be honest- this is something we all struggle with) over at Manifest Connection.

Here are her tips to use social media to help promote your E-book to a broader audience than ever before!

Writing a superb piece of fiction is no easy task, requiring any writer to offer up the very best in imagination, knowledge, and the ability to compile a truly interesting book that prompts readers to continue turning pages; don’t waste that effort by allowing it to go unread!

While writing may be your first and foremost line of work, every successful self-published author knows that there comes a time to put down the pencil and pick up the marketing plan. With no publishing house standing behind you, every role in the selling of books is yours to fill, including that of advertiser.

Luckily, the ever-growing social web had made it easier than ever for anyone to become a marketer when the need arises. In order to get you started on the right path, here are five helpful tips for effective social media promotion of your ebook:

1. Use Your Imagination

The first step in any successful endeavor is usually planning, and that is very true where marketing your ebook is concerned. While it may very well be unknown territory for you, the setting of goals and making of plans will help to keep you focused and organized throughout your marketing campaign. This is an opportunity for you to get creative, utilizing the same imagination that allowed you to create the work of art that you’ll soon be delivering to the masses. There is nothing so unique as work of fiction, and that means that no one will know better than you how best to sell it. As a writer, it’s very likely that you also at least an occasional reader, and that very fact gives you exactly the insight that you need to creatively market your work to others of similar interests.

2. Begin with the Obvious…

While “social media” is a term that encompasses a wide range of websites and activity on the internet, it instantly brings to mind names like Facebook and Twitter, and with good reason; there are nearly 1.5 billion users active on those two platforms alone. With that huge pool of potential readers in mind, it’s clear that tackling the big players on the social media landscape is a must, allowing your ebook to be exposed to the greatest number of people in the smallest amount of time.

3. …But Think Outside of the Box

While it makes sense to turn your immediate attention to key social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, you should never forget that the online social landscape is much broader than just the big names, with an array of websites out there that have the potential of serving your cause even better than those boasting hundreds of millions of users.

For example, the popular guest blogging website MyBlogGuest offers up a promotional category for ebooks in particular, helping you to connect your published work with people who are looking for exactly that.

Sure, millions of possible buyers should have you frothing at the proverbial mouth, but hundreds or even just tens of people who have ebooks on the brain can prove much more valuable in the short-term, especially when you’re just starting to get the word out about what your ebook has to offer.

4. Always Be Engaging

Whether you find yourself hanging out on major social platforms like Facebook, or smaller ones like the aforementioned MyBlogGuest, the key to being successful in your marketing campaign is being a human being.

Web surfers can go just about anywhere for an overview of your book – what they’re looking for on social media is to be engaged. In order to ensure that every visit to your social profiles is a worthwhile one for visitors, make yourself available to drop plot hints, answer questions, strike up open conversation with commenters, and perform just about any other social duty that is asked of you.

In order to create a bridge between your social media presence and your own personal website, consider using widgets and feeds to bring your social media activity to your search engine visitors, making it easy for them to make the jump from reading about your book and its content to diving into the midst of your fans. Besides encouraging followers to check out all of your offerings on the web, you’ll almost certainly increase the number of people who make a point to personally engage you this way, opening the door to even more of the type of conversation that has the best chance to lead to conversions.

This will go a very long way towards getting people excited about not only what your book has to offer, but also you as an author; while it may not be necessary for you to like an artist as a person in order to enjoy their work, it most certainly doesn’t hurt!

5. Keep Up the Good Work

When sales finally start racking up, you may have the urge to let up on the marketing gas pedal and take it easy, allowing word of mouth to do the trick on your behalf, but this is no time to slow down! You’ve finally achieved some momentum, and now is the time to take advantage of that.

To that end, keep up your engaging behavior, maintain your presence on all of the social networks that you’ve conquered, and continue to be the kind of author that you wish all of your favorites were, as well. While there’s no need to hover endlessly over your profiles, make a point to maintain a healthy update schedule, letting your fans know that you’re just as dependable and engaging now as you always were. Exactly how much time you spend updating is up to you, but a commitment to update at least once per week is an easy way to set a tone with your readers while maximizing the time that you spend writing.

This will go a long way towards helping you to maintain a healthy level of sales for your book, not to mention the extreme benefit that it will have if you plan to write a sequel – or three.

We could not have asked for a more charming, interactive, and imaginative story book to be our first children’s book review.

From the first page, which announces, “this is a retelling of a story my son shared with me when he was two years old,” it’s clear that The Fire Truck and the Moon is a story of zany possibilities and laughter, taken straight from two year old José’s bountiful imagination.

What makes children’s books sometimes difficult to relate to is the gap between the audience and the readers. While some stories (think Jan Brett, Dr. Seuss) manage this gap beautifully, others (think Steinbeck’s The Red Pony)seem to broaden this gap, allowing the writer’s adult perspective to overcome the interests of the child reader.

Written by a two year old with a love of dinosaurs (especially the T-Rex), snowy mountaintops and winter weather, and featuring a cast of machines including a firetruck and train engine, the bright imagination thought out by José shines on every page, and eliminates this gap in a way no other storybook truly can. The fantastic subject matter is on par with every conversation in every preschool around the world, set to enthrall and capture any young audience.

Beyond the text, which reads something like a more sophisticated Dick and Jane trainer, with rhythm and repetition that is perfect for any youngster learning to read, or first being introduced to the artistry of children’s books, the illustrations are the perfect accompaniment to the magical journey of the characters.

Drawn first by hand before being transferred to the iPad, and touched up on Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, each page features a full-size illustration that wonderfully reflects the text below. The illustrations themselves are whimsical outlines filled in with bright textures. Beautiful colors and detailed shapes convey the progression of the story. The most entertaining of all the pictures are easily the dinosaurs, a herd of which roam the pages, sure to inspire the imagination of any child. The drawings easily succeed in visualizing the story on each page, allowing for connections between the words being read aloud and the illustrations. And, when kids start to read on their own, the book’s illustrations give the perfect feedback, as the pictures are a visual interpretation of the words on the page, allowing young readers to reinforce their skills on every page.

One of the strongest elements of the book is this repetition. A page featuring a single dragon in a house becomes a page featuring a multitude of dragons in a house, sticking out from every door, window and chimney. When learning to read, this simple repetition allows young readers and listeners to fully understand the story and its progression. It shows the plot building and the story changing, and is graspable to any young child.

When sharing the story with a youngster, I noticed how, after our first time reading the story book to her, she took the liberty of replacing “Abuela Susi” from the book with “Nana Barb,” who, she thought “looked a lot like Abuela Susi. Connecting the story to her own life made reading the picture book that much more exciting, and she happily read it aloud twice more.

Overall, The Fire Truck and the Moon is a whimsical adventure through the imagination of a child that is a wonderful addition to the library of any child who is learning to read, or about to be. With simple repetition that can be memorized after a few readings, and illustrations that guide the reader through the book, it will instill confidence into any beginning reader, and encourage many more readings.

Number of Pages: 30

Recommended For: a babysitter, before bedtime, anyone beginning to learn to read